Until Dawn
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: Oneshot, Desmond meets his ancestors in what is probably the afterlife. Apparently, being dead is a lot like camping.


Death… was not supposed to be like this.

The pain, he had expected. Touching the eye in the temple had felt like shedding the layers of his mind like an onion. It had torn away the lies he told himself, the insecurities, the expectations of others, everything but the cold, hard truth of what he was. And it was wonderful and terrible, and very, very brief.

And then it was over.

He was in a forest, and he felt calm. Desmond wracked his brain, trying to remember the last time he had felt truly calm, and couldn't come up with a single example. He had been running for a long time. From the templars, from his family, even from himself. Only now that his life was over did he finally feel peace.

The forest looked unfamiliar, but there was a path at his feet. Desmond put one foot forward, and then the other. He started walking.

He had been walking for several minutes when he started to hear voices from somewhere up ahead. It was the first sign he'd had that he wasn't alone in this forest, and he picked up his pace a little in curiosity.

Finally, he rounded a curve in the path and came within view of what looked like a campsite. It was little more than a small clearing in the woods, a natural dip in the ground with a circle of rocks in the middle. Within this was a fire, large enough to give light and warmth but not large enough to be out of control.

Four people sat around the fire, three of them talking in low voices. Desmond was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but from the tone of their voices it sounded like an argument. Or… not an argument, exactly. In Desmond's experience, arguments were loud and impatient, with all parties involved too occupied with their own opinion to listen to what the others had to say. These three were deep in conversation, two of them with their faces angled toward the third, who was in the middle of a lengthy explanation of something or other.

The fourth didn't seem to be listening. He was seated farthest from Desmond, on the opposite side of the fire. The light from the fire turned him into nothing but a silhouette, but it was a silhouette that Desmond knew. Intimately.

"Altair," he said, and the shadow shifted to look at him more directly. He didn't say anything, although Desmond distinctly heard him huff under his breath.

"What year are you from?"

He looked back at the group of three on the closer side of the fire, and was not at all surprised to see that he recognized them all. The man that had been speaking before Desmond interrupted was Haytham Kenway, and the two that had been listening to him were his son Connor, and Ezio Auditore.

Desmond was vaguely aware that he should be concerned about this. But he should also be dead, so maybe this impossible collection of ancestors really wasn't something he should worry about after all. And everything here just felt so calm, it was impossible to believe anything bad was going to happen.

"Me?" He realized that all eyes were suddenly on him. "I'm from 2012."

"Two thousand twelve," Ezio echoed, tilting his head back as if this would help him more fully appreciate the words. "Twenty first century! And you still know Altair. Face it, _il mentore,_ you are a legend."

"I told you to let that go," Altair said. He sounded tired, and Desmond could well imagine them having this conversation before he arrived. Ezio had always been a little obsessed with the older assassin.

"Um…" All eyes turned back to Desmond again. "You're all legends, honestly. Some more than others, but… yea. You're all…" His face was steadily turning red as the other four looked at him. He felt like a trespasser here, the most ordinary man in a group of extraordinary assassins. And Haytham.

"So maybe you're a legend too," Ezio said. He smiled lopsidedly as Desmond laughed. "Well, you never know. Maybe in a century or two."

"No," Desmond insisted. "I never did anything special. All I did was run away, and get kidnapped. Templars forced me into a machine called an animus. I lived through all of your memories, and then I was killed. I never did anything but pretend to be someone else."

It was clear that nobody quite knew what to say to that, but finally Altair sighed and gestured for Desmond to take a seat with the rest of them next to the fire. "Come here," he said. "And explain."

-/-

It took a very long time to tell the others everything that had happened to him over the past several months. Even so, by the time Desmond finished, the stars had barely moved across the sky. The moon had just barely cleared the eastern horizon, and their little forest clearing was still lit by the dim glow of stars in the twilight. Time didn't seem to be working right, and Desmond couldn't make himself care. There was something comforting about all this. Sitting around the orange glow of the campfire, the way humans had done for millennia, sharing stories and waiting out the darkness together. He felt like he really belongs here, among these… these _legends_ , as Ezio continued to point out. This was nothing like the animus, where he found himself slipping into the too-large shoes of dead men. This was just… him, being himself.

"That's a good story," Ezio said. He patted Desmond on the shoulder. "I'm sorry about the ending. And the middle had some sad parts."

Desmond smiled. "I wasn't a fan of the kidnapping at the beginning, either."

"Mm, right. I'm sorry about that too."

"So how _exactly_ was it a good story?" Haytham asked. He leaned over from Ezio's other side, crossing his arms and arching one eyebrow. "If the beginning and the middle and the end were all terrible, what exactly was good about it?"

"Well, it was very well told," Ezio said, and in the face of his good natured laughter, even Haytham cracked a smile.

-/-

"I built the fire," Connor told Desmond later. "It was sunset when I got here, and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. I thought we might as well be comfortable."

They were laid out side by side on their stomachs, watching the crackling fire. Little sparks cracked and popped out of the flames, burning briefly as they drifted along eddies of wind, then flickering out.

"It's a good fire," Desmond said at last. Both of them speak in hushed voices, because the other three were asleep. Ezio was sprawled out closest to the fire, so close Desmond had to keep leaning over to push his arms and legs away from the open flame. Haytham was on his side nearby, arms crossed over his chest, breathing slow and even. On the far side of the fire, Altair had curled himself into a tight ball, tense even in sleep. None of them had even thought to set a watch before going to sleep, a mistake that none of them would have dared to make in any normal circumstances. Here, it seemed silly to even suggest it- this didn't feel like a place where dangerous things happened.

He nodded at Haytham. "Is it okay if your dad's here?" he asked.

Connor's eyes drifted over to Haytham and he studied the older man in silence for several minutes before responding. "Yes," he said when he finally spoke again. "There's no reason to fight anymore. It doesn't matter that he's here. Maybe I'll get the chance to say some things that should have been said before."

"Like what?"

Connor just barely smiled. "Quite honestly, that's none of your business."

"Fair enough." He considered his next few words. "How long do you think we'll be here?"

"I don't know." He turned over to look up at the sky, and Desmond mimicked the motion. He shoved Ezio's right hand away from the fire pit again, reaching across the empty space absentmindedly. "Maybe until the sun comes up?"

The moon had almost but not quite hit its highest point. Desmond gave an inexpressive grunt. "Well then," he said. "Plenty of time until morning."

-/-

There were fireflies in the clearing. Desmond watched them blink lazily, in and out of focus. There was something innocent about it, even timeless. Desmond could remember chasing fireflies as a child, catching them in his hands and laughing at the way they tickled his fingers. He didn't try to catch them now. He just sat on a log near the fire, watching them and thinking about nothing much at all.

-/-

Desmond had almost managed to drift to sleep when he sensed someone walk over to him and stop. Haytham had woken some time ago and retreated into the darkness a little way away to talk to Connor. The sound of their muted conversation was a soothing backdrop in the distance, unbroken for once by argument or shouting. Desmond tried for several seconds to ignore whoever had come to watch him sleep, but the animus had left him with some instincts he could not ignore, and eventually he gave up the pretense and opened his eyes.

Ezio was standing over him, looking down with a soft smile on his face. Desmond squinted back up at him, too tired to even open his eyes all the way. Ezio looked no different than he had in the last memory Desmond had seen of him, when they had finally reached the library of Altair hidden under Masyaf, and discovered the ancient mentor's skeleton hidden inside. The only difference was that he had given up his assassin's robes for something less elaborate and more comfortable- Desmond found himself wondering what Ezio had done with the rest of his life, and wishing he could have seen some of those more peaceful memories through the animus.

"Hi," he said, after a moment or two of silence that threatened to stretch on indefinitely.

Ezio lowered himself onto the ground next to Desmond without a word, stretching out on his back so that they lay side by side, looking up at the stars. "I never liked the idea of constellations," he said conversationally, and Desmond squinted up at the distant pinpricks of light. There were no lights here apart from the stars and moon overhead and their campfire crackling merrily a few feet away.

Without any kind of light pollution, there was nothing to block even the glow from even the most distant stars. Desmond had never seen so many all at once, not even during his childhood on the Farm. The stars were so numerous, it almost looked like some celestial being had just upended a bowl of powdered sugar on the sky. Looking into the stars like this, Desmond thought he understood for the first time why so many humans clung to their religions. In a universe this vast, it only made sense that people would assume something equally infinite had created it all. And who knows, he thought to himself. _Everything is permitted_ \- maybe those people were right.

Desmond turned to Ezio, and said absolutely none of what he had been thinking. "What's wrong with the constellations?" he asked instead.

He decided he would never get tired of staring at the sky, so long as it looked like this.

"They're so constricting. The skies are so big, they deserve to be free. And besides…" he shot Desmond a wide smile that made him look ten years younger. "I can never actually find the stars I'm supposed to be looking for. They all look the same to me."

"They're all different, though," Desmond said. "Some of them are new, some are old. They're all different colors and sizes, and a lot of them have planets of their own."

"Huh." Ezio looked over at Desmond, then back up at the sky. "Think anyone on any of those planets is looking at us?"

"No idea," he said. "I don't even know if this counts as a planet, I don't even know if this is a real place."

"Well…" Ezio nudged him a little, and his grin was weirdly optimistic. "We'll find out in the morning."

"Connor said something like that too," Desmond said. "About us only being here until morning."

"Did he? Well, it's just a feeling I had. Like all this is going to change in the morning."

"Then I don't want it to be morning," Desmond said. "I'm tired of everything changing. Why can't things just be peaceful a little while longer?"

"I don't know," Ezio said. "Maybe that's just how things work. Or maybe the world just isn't done with you yet."

"With me? What about the rest of you?"

But Ezio didn't answer. "You should try to sleep for a while," he said instead. "Be ready for whatever happens when the sun comes up."

Desmond sat up, reaching to stop Ezio as he stood. "No," he protested. "Wait! You didn't tell me… why me?"

Ezio surprised him by turning back and giving him a warm hug. It was reassuring rather than strange. Desmond couldn't remember any of his grandparents, but he thought this might be what a grandfather felt like. Sometimes, thanks to his time in the animus, Desmond almost forgot that these people were his ancestors, essentially his great-great-etc-grandparents. It was easier to think of them as tools, or avatars through which he could see the past.

But they weren't. They were real people too, and at least right here and right now, they were his family and they cared.

"Sleep, Desmond," Ezio said again. "You'll feel better."

-/-

"Wake up. I want to talk to you."

Desmond was woken a second time by someone walking over to him. This time, when he opened his eyes and sat up, he was surprised to see Haytham standing at his side. A slightly sick feeling shuddered its way through his body, and Desmond crossed his arms. He didn't much like Haytham, and seeing him in person only made that worse. It wasn't even that the man was a templar, although that made him uncomfortable too. Haytham was just so stiff, it was almost inhuman.

"What do you want to talk about?" he asked after he had stood up.

"I'm not sure," Haytham said, but the hungry look in his eyes as he studied Desmond said something entirely different.

"What do you want?" he asked again, and this time Haytham didn't beat around the bush.

"What was the point of it all?" he asked. "You're from the future. And you've seen our lives. Mine. Connor's. All the… the fighting, the war, everything we did. It must have been worth something in the end."

"No." Desmond didn't want to lie, and he didn't care much about sparing Haytham's feelings. "Templars kept fighting assassins. The same fights between the same two groups. Only the weapons changed, and we're still fighting the same damn fight. Everything you did in your life had already been forgotten by the time I heard your name. You've been so thoroughly forgotten that we couldn't even figure out if you were an assassin or a templar before I saw it in the animus."

"Ah." He nodded, just once. "I suppose I should have expected that."

Over Haytham's shoulder, Desmond could see Ezio eyeing him disapprovingly. He thought again about their earlier conversation, and his own thought that they were all the family they had at the moment.

"Wait," he called, and Haytham arched an eyebrow as he turned back to Desmond.

"Yes?"

"You don't have to be remembered to be a good person," he said. "And you are. Not the _nicest_ person I've ever met, I mean you're still kind of…." He groped for a kind way to phrase it. "Well, you're you. But you have convictions. You don't kill when you don't believe you're doing the right thing. You're forgotten, but that doesn't mean you didn't have an impact on history."

"Alright Desmond, you don't have to puff my ego." But Desmond thought he looked a little brighter as he turned and walked away.

-/-

It was very close to dawn when Altair came to find him. Even Desmond could feel it by this point, the twitchy expectation that something was about to happen. When the sun came up, everything was going to change. They would have to leave.

Connor was busy stamping out the remains of their fire, while Ezio argued with Haytham about the direction they were going to take when it was time to leave. Ezio was clearly enjoying the disagreement, and as Haytham got increasingly annoyed, Ezio glanced over at Desmond and grinned.

"They're going to drive each other crazy within a week," Desmond said.

"Three days," Altair disagreed. "Possibly less."

They watched each other for a moment. Desmond wasn't exactly sure what to think of Altair, despite being the first ancestor he'd met in the animus, was still something of a mystery to him. He didn't know what to do with the kind of unshakeable loyalty to the assassins that Altair held- even when his mentor had turned out to be a traitor, even when he had been driven away from Masyaf, he never turned away from the creed.

Desmond couldn't imagine that kind of single minded commitment to anything, but Altair… he had taken the creed and elevated it to something new, redesigned it for a changing world. Without him, the order of assassins that all the rest of them (minus Haytham) were part of wouldn't exist, not in this form, anyway.

"Please tell me you're not as star struck as Ezio was when we first met," Altair said. "He stuttered like a nervous child for a long time before you arrived."

"I'm not star struck. I'm just thinking." About Altair, admittedly, but he wasn't about to tell that to his ancestor. "What happens after this?" he asked. "After tonight, do we move on? Stay together? What?"

"I don't know. None of us do."

It was the answer Desmond had expected, but not the one he wanted. It felt safe here, but now that it was undoubtedly time to move on, Desmond was reminded of the thick, wild growth of trees that filled the possibly endless forest. Altair looked him in the eye. "Are you afraid, Desmond?"

"Yes," he admitted in a whisper. "I don't know what happened. I don't know why I'm here. I don't even know if I'm really dead, it's all… a king of blur, and the last thing I remember is that damn artifact in the temple- it's not like precursor stuff ever does what we expect…"

He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. The metal in his hidden blade reflected the light of the last dying embers of the fire Connor was still focused on extinguishing. "I keep hoping this is all just a bad dream," he said. "I want to wake up and find out that everything's okay. I want to see my friends again, my dad. I… I was going to wait until after everything was over before calling my mom. I haven't heard her voice in nine years. Dying now wouldn't be _fair_!"

Altair didn't argue. He didn't say that life (or death) wasn't supposed to be fair. And he didn't say that it was impossible or unlikely for Desmond to still be alive. He just put his hand on Desmond's shoulder, squeezing slightly so that Desmond can actually feel the empty space where his missing finger ought to be. "Either way," he said. "Alive or dead, we can't stay here. The only thing to do is keep moving on, and find out what comes next."

Desmond looked up. The other three were standing in a loose group, clearly ready to go. Haytham and Ezio had apparently finished their argument, and come to some temporary truce. "Okay," Desmond said. The sun was just beginning to peak over the eastern horizon, bathing the forest with warm, red and orange light. The night was over, and morning had come. "It's time to go."

They walked together out of the clearing. Not a one of them looked back.

 **-/-**

 **I have writer's block and I am not going to get a chance to go camping this summer. That is the only explanation I have for whatever this is.**


End file.
